Dina Abad, Philippines, Congressional Representative, Batanes; former Dean, Ateneo School of Government; previously an organizer and activist with people's movements.
Ana Luisa Ahern, JASS Communications Associate, grew up in Honduras and in the United States. After she graduated with a degree in Art History and Visual Arts from Barnard College in New York City, she returned to Honduras to co-found a fast-growing youth organization called OYE which provides education, leadership training, and capacity building to low-income children and young adults in Honduras. In addition to co-founding OYE, Ana Luisa, who is bilingual, has provided support to JASS in all regions, including playing a key role in alternative communications, documentation, graphic design, website support and more. She studied at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands, and Center for Development Studies in Trivandrum, India. She worked closely with the Self-Employed Women’s Association in Ahmedabad, India. An accomplished artist and photographer, Ana brings a combination of creative and artistic talents with her tech skills and activism to JASS' movement-building agenda.
Mariela
Arce, Panama, long-time feminist and rights advocate, involved throughout Latin America with innovative popular education and participatory democracy work, including training many popular educators regionally through ALFORJA. She currently works with CEASPA (the Panamanian Center for Social Research and Action) and is an active leader in the Panamanian Women’s Alliance.
Patricia Ardón , Guatemalan anthropologist. Patricia has worked in development, focusing on a variety of issues impacting Central America. She worked in CRS in the early 70s and was the regional representative of Oxfam UK for Mexico and Central America. She was the Regional Representative for CEDPA until 2005 and holds various advisory positions within diverse local, national and regional organizations. She is currently the Director of Sinergia No'j.
Srilatha Batliwala, Srilatha Batliwala , a long-time women's rights advocate, is a Civil Society Research Fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University, where her work focuses on transnational civil society, transnational grassroots movements, and practice-research engagement. She is also Senior Advisor to the project on Feminist Organizations and Movements of the Association of Women's Rights in Development (AWID) and the Chair of the Board of the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), New York.
Formerly, Srilatha worked as Program Officer in the Governance and Civil Society Program of the Ford Foundation, New York, and as head of the Women's Policy Research and Advocacy Unit (now, the Gender Studies Unit) of the National Institute for Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India.
Over the past 30 years, Srilatha has combined grassroots activism, policy advocacy, research and teaching, with experience that spans mobilizing and organizing poor urban and rural women in India, empirical research, theory building from grassroots practice, participation in major national and international policy processes, and research and publishing on key issues related to gender and development. Her most well known publications include the book Status of Rural Women in Karnataka, and Women's Empowerment in South Asia - Concepts and Practices.
Featured papers:
Grassroots
Movements as Transnational Actors: Implications for Global
Civil Society
Putting power back into empowerment
The political claim advanced by women in India via the idea of "empowerment" has been appropriated by their adversaries and false friends. It needs to be rewon for a fresh vision grounded in the experiences of poor women, says Srilatha Batliwala.
Women must reassess their political progress and achievements if they are to transform mainstream politics. Srilatha Batliwala sizes up the challenge.
From
Evaluation to Learning in Social Change: The Challenges of
'Measuring Development, Holding Infinity
When Rights Go Wrong
Srilatha Batliwala's speech to the UN General Assembly, Mar 6, 2007
"...I ask you now to ponder one of the great challenges of our times: even as global commitment to poverty eradication and social justice has seemingly increased, so has the belief that there are magic bullets and quick fixes which can override the need for more fundamental but painful and longer-term interventions. We need processes that would tackle the basic structures of power and privilege and truly transform our societies in favour of women and all marginalized and excluded people..." (full speech)
Alejandra Bergemann, JASS Program Associate, is from México, D.F., and during the past 2 years she worked with Fuerza Unida, a grassroots organization in San Antonio, Texas, whose mission is to educate, empower and organize women workers and their families. A graduate of Trinity University, where she majored in Anthropology, International Studies and Spanish Literature, she has also lived in Bangkok, Thailand, where she first began using popular education methodologies in her work as a teacher and tutor. Alejandra was also part of the Coordinating Committee of the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), an alliance of grassroots organizations based in the United States. Her work with GGJ ranged from promoting the use of popular education as a tool for social justice organizing and movement-building, to participating in the organizing of the 2006 Border Social Forum in Ciudad Juárez, México, to working to include women’s voices and gender perspectives in the organizing work done at a local, national, and global level.
Hope
Chigudu, Ugandan living in Zimbabwe, gender equality activist/consultant; organizational development expert and strategist with many African justice groups; MWENGO Board Member; former Chair,
Global Fund for Women. Co-author, Reviving Democracy: Citizens at the Heart of Governance, Commonwealth Secretariat: 2001.
Cindy
Clark, US, has worked closely with numerous coalitions, NGOs and community groups in the US and Latin America to strengthen their ability to connect citizen engagement with long-term human rights advocacy strategies. She was the Program Coordinator for Women, Law and Development International, an NGO committed to the promotion and defense of women's rights globally, where she coordinated capacity-building programs in women's human rights advocacy worldwide. She lived in Chile for four years where she worked with PARTICIPA, an NGO dedicated to promoting participatory democracy. She has a Bachelors degree in International Relations and Economics and a Masters in Human and Organization Development.
Rashida Dohad, Pakistan, is a popular educator, gender equality activist, and citizen-centered democracy promoter. She has worked with communities throughout Pakistan to build citizen participation and the practice of human rights. In 2003, she co-founded the Omar Asghar Khan Development Foundation, which has played a role in mobilizing relief and reconstruction in the wake of the 2005 earthquake, and challenging aid and government agencies to ensure more resources reach people. In 2006, her organization initiated an innovative participatory budget project to enable communities to track and demand resources.
Read about Omar Foundation's New Budget Initiatives.
Ralph Fine has over 35 years of experience
in nonprofit organizations, government, law, and business. Currently
he is principal of Fine & Associates, a consulting firm
to nonprofits and businesses based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Most recently Fine & Associates served as Interim Executive
Director of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, and previously, in
the same role for the Washington Office on Latin America. For
much of the 1990's, Mr. Fine was president of Integral
Resources - a provider of high quality telemarketing services
to nationally-known nonprofit and political organizations -
including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, numerous
state chapters of Special Olympics, Children's Defense Fund,
People for the American Way, and the Democratic National Committee.
Mr. Fine also served as executive director of International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a Nobel prize-winning
nonprofit organization dedicated to the elimination of nuclear
weapons. In the late 1980's, Mr. Fine founded and served as
president of Hemisphere Initiatives, a nonprofit organization
focused on the promotion of democracy and development in Central
America. During the late 1970's and early 1980's, Mr. Fine was
principal owner and publisher of The Real Paper, a weekly alternative
newspaper distributed in Metropolitan Boston. In his extensive
legal career, Mr. Fine served as managing partner of the law
firm in which he practiced for many years, overseeing its growth
to over sixty lawyers. He has also been president of League
School of Greater Boston, one of the first schools of its kind
for autistic children. He has served on numerous boards of nonprofit
organizations and public and private companies. He has advised
many nonprofit organizations, including Boston Women's Fund,
Women Law & Development, Highlander Center and Grassroots
International. He is an honors graduate of the University of
Pennsylvania and Columbia Law School where he was a Harlan Fiske
Stone Scholar.
John Gaventa has
worked for more than 25 years in both northern and southern
contexts on issues of citizen participation, power, participatory
research and education methodologies and participatory governance.
He is interested in linking participation to policies and programs
of larger institutions as well as in training and capacity building
for strengthening civil society. Since 1996, Gaventa has been
a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University,
UK, where he is currently the director of the Development
Research Center on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability.
Gaventa previously led the Participation
Group at IDS.
Featured paper: "Triumph,
Deficit or Contestation? Deepening the 'Deepening Democracy'
Debate "
JoJo Geronimo, based in Canada at the Toronto Labor Council, is a union and grassroots organizer and popular educator in the US and around the world. Originally from the Philippines, he has made contributions to many pioneering popular education manuals and materials and his training and facilitation combines anti-oppression and political advocacy work. Co-author of Education for Changing Unions, Canada: 2002.
Azola Goqwana started working on HIV/AIDS as a student volunteer in 2002. She went on to manage and implement the Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s HIV/AIDS students peer education program, giving care and support to HIV positive students. Since then, Azola worked with several HIV/AIDS and gender organizations before joining JASS-Southern Africa’s Cape Town office as Program Associate.
Margaret
(Peggy) Healy, USA has been a human
rights advocate for nearly 30 years. In addition to her work
with Just Associates, she is a Professor at Fordham Law School
in New York where she directed, until recently, the Crowley
Program in International Human Rights. She has carried out her
human rights work in many different ways and places over the
years, beginning in Nicaragua in the 1970's where she was a
Maryknoll Sister working as a nurse in poor communities. Within
a short-time, she became an Advocate with the Washington Office
on Latin America. Her credibility and persuasiveness made her
a prominent opponent of US policy on Central
America on Capital Hill from the early 80s through 1990, where
she regularly gave congressional testimony and advised key legislators,
particularly Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neil. She was also
a reliable resource to numerous journalists covering the region,
including serving as an advisor to 60 minutes and appearing
in Oscar nominated documentaries. After getting her law degree
in 1996, Ms. Healy worked in legal aid in addition to clerking
with a Federal judge. She wrote and presented extensively on
child pornography as a human rights issue. In April 2002, she
received the Louis J Lefkowitz Public Service Award for the
mental health services she provided to survivors and their families
for several weeks following 9/11.
Lori
Heise*, US/UK; Founding coordinator, Global Campaign for Microbicides; Advisor, Program for Appropriate Technology in
Health; long-time gender activist. She is the Director of the Global Campaign for Microbicides, a coalition of over 200 organizations worldwide that mobilize support among policymakers, opinion leaders, and the general public for increased investment into microbicides and other user-controlled methods of HIV protection. For the past 16 years, Ms. Heise has worked to make women's empowerment an explicit part of the global HIV prevention strategy. She has published widely on the topics of sexuality, gender, and power and has served as an expert advisor to the World Health Organization on violence against women and HIV/AIDS. In 2000, she became the first-ever recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Advocacy from ASHA (American Social Health Association) and in 2002 MS Magazine recognized her as one of the “50 women who made a difference.” She is also co-principal investigator on the WHO Multi-country Study on Domestic Violence and Women’s Health.
Annie
Holmes is a Zimbabwean writer, editor, filmmaker,
and trainer. She is a long-time gender equality and gay rights activist who worked extensively in development in Southern
Africa for twenty years before moving to the US in 2001. After
studies in South Africa, she became co-head of Zimbabwe Publishing
House's editorial department, launched a Women of Africa imprint,
trained editors, and managed education and development lists.
Later, she ran a non-profit audio-visual facility in Harare
with two other women before starting her own production company.
Annie has researched, written, produced, and directed more than
thirty educational and advocacy documentaries, with print support
and methods, for southern African and UK-based development NGOs,
integrating multimedia within empowerment and evaluation processes.
In South Africa, Annie won commissions to produce seven series
for the national public broadcaster's education channel in the
late 1990s.
New Books: A memoir of life in newly independent Zimbabwe, Good Red.
Underground America, oral histories of undocumented workers (associate editor and writer)
Timothea Howard is the Program Integration and Expansion Manager for CentroNia a community based, bilingual, multi-cultural learning center in Washington, DC. She is a community, labor and cultural organizer who served with the American Federation of Teachers, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees-Council 31, International Brotherhood of Teamsters and as a campus recruiter for the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute. From 1998-2001, she served as the Senior Organizer for the National Organizers Alliance.
In Washington, DC, Timothea was the Lead Organizer for the Columbia Heights/Shaw Family Support Collaborative and the community-organizing consultant for DC VOICE. She conducted organizing trainings for the National Organizers Alliance, Black Radical Congress, the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, DC VOICE, Mothers on the Move, LISTEN, Inc., the Michigan Coalition against Domestic Violence - Women of Color Caucus, and the Inter-Group Community Initiative of the Mosaic Foundation. Timothea serves on the board of directors of the Nuclear Information and Research Service, the Praxis Project and the DC WritersCorp. Timothea is the National Outreach Coordinator for California Newsreel and the film RACE - The Power of an Illusion a three-part documentary series produced for public television.
As a working artist, Timothea graduated from the Corcoran School of Art with Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Upon graduation, she worked as a painter before entering the theater full time. Beginning with the Source Theater Company under the mentorship of Bart Whiteman and at DC Stage with Dorothy Neumann, Timothea worked as a stage manager, stage hand, properties manager, producer and director for 11 seasons with Gala Hispanic Theater, The New Arts Theater, Sanctuary Theater, the Kennedy Center Opera House and Programs for Children and Youth, the National Theater, New Playwrights Theater, Horizon Feminist Theater, Dance Place, the Pola Nirenska Dance Company, the Primary Movers Performance Company and Anacostia Repertory Company. Ms. Howard is a member of Sophie's Parlor Feminist Radio Collective on Pacifica Station WPFW. During the firs Gulf War, she hosted Another Perspective a news program produced by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC and Shasta Communications.
In 1999, Timothea received the Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellowship Award.
Joanna
Kerr, formerly Executive Director, Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID); currently advisor to diverse women’s rights organizations and donor agencies; Board member, Nobel Women’s Initiative. Previously Joanna was a Senior Researcher at The North-South Institute in Ottawa. She managed the gender program at The North-South Institute for almost 7 years, where she started the Gender and Economic Reforms in Africa Program (GERA). The GERA program is an action research initiative that brings together 16 African organizations to influence economic policies from a gender perspective.
She holds an MA in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. She has policy research, participatory research, advocacy, gender training, project management and monitoring, writing and public speaking experience on issues related to the gender dimensions of economic reform, trade and investment, women's human rights, and women's employment issues. She is on the editorial board of Oxfam’s Gender and Development, the Chair of the Board of Gender at Work Collaborative, and part of the governance of several international civil society advocacy initiatives. She has worked in collaboration with researchers and practitioners in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Ghana, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Côte d'Ivoire.
Featured book: The Future of Women's Rights: Global Visions and Strategies
Dina Lumbantobing is a gender & development specialist, trainer & consultant,
with a focus on women's economic and political empowerment and
organizing. She co-founded PESADA (Sada Ahmo Association), a Sumatra-based NGO dedicated fighting ethnic discrimination and promoting women’s rights.
Since February 2005, she has been focused on the disaster area
in Nias Island following the tsunami. In addition to managing
volunteers and distributing food, healthcare, and clothes, Sada
Ahmo started a 2-year project on women's economic development
through women's credit union groups, training, health projects
and political education for women and children in Nias Island.
Dina is also coordinator of the Learning Forum for NGO Capacity
Building, through which she does NGO organizational assessments
with a focus on management capacity. Dina recently completed
two books on the struggle of women in politics in North Sumatra:
"Political Labyrinth" and a guidebook for teachers
on integrating gender and reproductive health in teaching.
Dr. Valerie Miller,
Senior Advisor & Co-Founder of JASS, has
worked in advocacy, international development, gender, and human
rights for more than 30 years. She has collaborated with grassroots
organizations, NGOs, and international agencies from around
the world as an organizer, trainer, advocate, evaluator, and
researcher. In the mid eighties she served as co-coordinator
of a national human rights coalition composed of main-line churches
and independent labor groups dedicated to ending US military
support to Central America. Over the past 15 years, she has
been policy advocacy director at Oxfam America, director of
policy and exchange programs at the Institute for Development
Research, and advisor and associate of a wide variety of organizations
including the Global Women in Politics Program, Women, Law and
Development International, and the Highlander Center. She has
also served as a board member of Cenzontle, a Nicaraguan NGO
focused on women’s economic and political empowerment,
and Grassroots International, a US-based group supporting social
movements around the world.
Her doctorate is in adult education and she
has published numerous articles and books on issues of advocacy,
development, education, and politics including a book analyzing
the Nicaraguan Literacy Crusade, Between Struggle and Hope,
published by Westview Press. Her research on advocacy coalitions
and power dynamics provided important insights for her book
with Jane Covey, Advocacy Sourcebook and her subsequent work
with Lisa VeneKlasen.
Malena de Montis is a Nicaraguan feminist with a doctoral degree
in Education from the University of Massachusetts. She is the
founder of the Center for Democratic Participation and Development,
CENZONTLE and the Women's Development Fund FODEM/CENZONTLE,
both non-governmental organizations that seek to support the
economic and political empowerment of women with scarce resources
through financial, business, and citizenship components that
have earned the Central American award for Best Practice from
INTERCAMBIO. She was the Director of CENZONTLE for 13 years
and is currently on the Board of Directors of both organizations.
She was a pioneer in the Autonomous Women's Movement and founder
of the Women's Coalition in Nicaragua. She has been a participant
and speaker in numerous meetings and conferences around the
world and is the author of various publications on issues of
women and development.
Niken Lestari is a librarian with passion for women’s studies and information technology, and is active in Kluwek, the Linux Women’s Community in Indonesia, which aims to spread the beneficial ‘virus’ of open source (or free) software. Niken sees community literacy as a path to producing knowledge. JASS Southeast Asia’s program coordinator is an active blogger. Her writings, mostly in bahasa Indonesia, can be found at http://soentingmelajoe.wordpress.com.
Marivic Raquiza is an anti-poverty activist and feminist who has supervised
organizing village organizations at the grassroots level, including women's
organizations. She has coordinated and done consultancy on gender
mainstreaming among NGOs in the Philippines and India. In the past, she
served as Assistant Vice President of the Philippine Rural Reconstruction
Movement (PRRM). She was also a Co-Convenor of the BluePrint for a Viable
Philippines, a platform for an alternative governance agenda based on
national sovereignty and expanding people's participation in development.
More recently, she was with the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)
as a member of the International Facilitating Team, was GCAP Asia
Co-Convenor, and founding National Coordinator of GCAP-Philippines, where
she helped highlight the links between poverty and debt, as well as poverty
and Official Development Assistance (ODA). She is currently a Co-Convenor of
Social Watch-Philippines.
Molly
Reilly works as a strategist and trainer with Just Associates,
currently coordinating JASS' Education Rights and Resources
Project on governance and public school reform in Washington,
DC. With a background in law, human rights and gender equality,
Molly was the Director of Programs at Women, Law and Development
International from 1998-2001 where she coordinated a multi-country
learning and action program aimed at using human rights as an
advocacy tool on a range of issues at local and national levels.
In addition to her efforts aimed at strengthening leadership
and transnational women's rights networks, she also coordinated
the documentation of experiences which were compiled in Becoming
an Advocate Step by Step, co-edited with Margaret Schuler.
From 1996-1998, Molly served as the Assistant Director of the
Global Women in Politics program where she oversaw strategic
grantmaking and capacity-building to groups working on gender
violence, migration and women's political participation. Molly
teaches a Masters course on advocacy for the School for Advanced
International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. In
the late 80s and early 90s, she served as a Legislative Aid
and worked with the US State Department. A graduate of Bryn
Mawr College, she has a law degree from the University of Michigan.
Atila Roque, a Brazilian, is a social and environmental justice advocate. Building on his close collaborations with many social movements and NGOs, he is a founder and former organizer of the World Social Forum – which began in Porto Alegre, Brazil before becoming global. Most recently, he was Executive Director of ActionAid USA (2003-2006), where he initiated an intensive effort to link with grassroots constituencies in the US. Since October 2006, he has served as the Co-Director of INESC (Institute for Economic and Social Studies), one of Brazil's best-known NGOs, working with a variety of social movements and communities on environmental, economic and social justice issues in Brazil and throughout the region. Prior to Action Aid, he served as the Coordinator for the Program on Public Policies and Globalization at IBASE (Brazilian Institute of Economic and Social Analyses), another Brazilian NGO which supports the advocacy efforts of movements and citizens. He also played other roles within the NGO sector, including as Director for the Brazilian Association of NGOs, the International Coordinating Committee of Social Watch and on the Coordinating Committee of the Brazilian Network on Trade and Regional Integration (Rebrip). He serves as trustee for numerous NGOs, including the Bank Information Center (USA) and the Center for Studies on Public Security and Citizenship (Brazil). He has a Bachelor's Degree in History and a Master’s Degree in Political Science.
John Samuel is an International Director of ActionAid International (AAI), leading the Governance and Democracy work of AAI worldwide and responsible for managing the work of the organization in the Asia-Pacific region. Previously he was the Executive Director of National Centre for Advocacy Studies in Pune, India. He has been actively involved in social action -- especially the human rights and environmental movements -- advocacy capacity building, research, and various advocacy campaigns for rights and justice at national and international levels for the last twenty years. He has facilitated more than two hundred and fifty advocacy capacity building programs, from the grassroots to international level. More than 4,000 grassroots activists and development professionals from South Asia and forty other countries participated in these programs. His primary area of work is building grassroots advocacy movements in India and the Global South. He is an advisor to a number of international development organizations. He is the Coordinator of INASIA, an Asian network of activists, writers, and journalists. He is the founder of BodhigramIndia, a grassroots organization working with children and women in the slums and Infochange, an ethical business initiative committed to social justice and corporate social responsibility. He writes on development, social change and culture, and is the editor of www.infochangeindia.org, a web-based daily development news channel.
Ellen Sprenger. As a strategist and consultant, Ellen Sprenger seeks to strengthen civil society organizations. She specializes in organizational change, management and capacity building, leadership development, strategic planning, alliance building and financial sustainability. Ellen has 20 years of working experience with non-profit organizations and foundations in over 20 countries worldwide. In addition to working with groups and individuals she also conducts research and develops tools and frameworks for accelerated learning, organizational development, resource mobilization, strategy development and evaluation. Earlier, Ellen was the Executive Director of Mama Cash, a dynamic women’s fund based in Amsterdam (2001 – 2004). During her leadership Mama Cash developed a new strategic direction and brand and doubled its fundraising results from € 2 to 4 million annually. She also worked for Oxfam Novib where she held the position of women’s rights and gender equality policy advisor, organizational development advisor and quality and control manager respectively (1992 – 2001). Alongside her work as a strategist and consultant, Ellen serves on a number of (international) boards and advisory committees, among others Tides Canada, the Women’s Funding Network, Central American Women’s Fund and Astra Network.
Peter van Tuijl currently works for
the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance
Program (ICITAP), a program under the United States Department
of Justice. ICITAP helps developing professional law enforcement services, mostly
in countries in transition to democracy. Mr. Van Tuijl previously
was a Program Advisor with the Partnership for Governance Reform
in Indonesia, see: www.kemitraan.or.id).
His main focuses were the program areas concerning Police Reform
and strengthening the engagement of Civil Society in Governance
Reform. Before joining the Partnership, Mr. Van Tuijl worked
for five years as a Senior Advisor with the Netherlands Organization
for International Development (Novib). In this capacity he conducted
supportive missions to well over twenty-five different countries
in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, concentrating on advocacy
capacity building, institutional development and strengthening
the participation of NGOs in governance. From 1986 up to 1996,
Mr. Van Tuijl served as Executive Secretary to the International
NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID). INFID is a network
of NGOs from Indonesia, Europe, Japan, the USA, Canada and Australia
with the mission to promote improvement of the situation in
Indonesia from the perspective of the core values and shared
experiences of the member NGOs. This included campaigns on different
aspects of human rights, law enforcement, poverty alleviation,
sustainable development, the autonomy of civil society and the
social responsibility of the corporate sector in Indonesia.
During this period, Mr. Van Tuijl chaired for a number of years
the Dutch NGO Working Group on the World Bank.
Mr. Van Tuijl graduated from the University of Amsterdam with
a Masters Degree in Modern Asian History and the Economy of
Developing Countries. He has published a number of articles
in Academic Journals and other media, on the role of NGOs, transnational
civil society, human rights, accountability as well as on social
and political developments in Indonesia.
New Book: "NGO Accountability: Politics, Principles, and Innovations"
Featured paper: "NGO
Governance and Accountability in Indonesia: Challenges in
a Newly Democratizing Country"
Lisa VeneKlasen, JASS Executive Director and co-founder. For over 25 years, Lisa VeneKlasen has been an advocate with and advisor to a variety of women’s rights and social justice efforts worldwide. In the early 1980s, fresh from student activism, Lisa's involvement in political organizing introduced her to progressive community-based leaders and movements across the US and led her to Nicaragua where she worked with the Sandinista government's renowned adult literacy program. Back in the US, she became a community organizer, and eventually, the media-outreach coordinator for the National Central America Peace Campaign, working closely with progressive faith-based groups and local elected officials. In pursuit of more direct policy influence, she led 30 fact-finding missions of opinion leaders to Central America and served as Legislative Aid for a US Congressional Representative.
For more than a decade prior to Just Associates, Lisa worked with numerous women’s rights and development organizations in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Through her work with Women, Law and Development International, Lisa coordinated a program to extend the Latin American Committee for Women’s Rights (CLADEM) to Central America, and in 1988 relocated to Zimbabwe to coordinate a parallel 10 country training and networking project that led to the creation of the pan-African Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF). Building on that effort, she prepared women rights organizations in eight African and Eastern European countries to participate in the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995. From 1997-2001, she was the Assistant Director of the Global Women in Politics program of the Asia Foundation, where she ran an innovative multi-regional advocacy training and political leadership project tied to a range of initiatives from inheritance rights to anti-corruption.
Lisa is the co-author of A New Weave of People, Power and Politics: The Action Guide to Advocacy and Citizen Participation (2002), which has been translated into 5 languages. She is an advisor to the Nobel Women’s Initiative. She holds a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Heather
White*, US (Founding Director, Verité; long-time corporate
accountability and social responsibility advocate)
Shamillah Wilson, a South African feminist based in Cape Town, coordinates JASS-Southern Africa. A former manager of AWID’s Young Women and Leadership Program (2001 to 2007), Shamillah’s interests in youth, leadership, HIV&AIDS, women’s rights and organisational development have involved her in a number of networks and initiatives, including the Global Fund for Women in Africa Advisory Council, Sonke Gender Justice Network board, Future Genderation and DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era.)
Everjoice Win started
working in the women's rights movement in Zimbabwe in 1989. Her
first formal job was with the Women's Action Group, as Deputy
then Editor of SPEAK OUT/TAURAI/KHULUMANI. WAG was and still
is one of the leading women's human rights organizations in
the country. Everjoice's work involved not only publishing SPEAK
OUT, but leading the oganization's advocacy campaigns, legal
literacy work as well as liaison with government. From WAG she moved to the Pan-African network,
Women In Law and Development in Africa, (WiLDAF), where she
coordinated the Zimbabwean chapter, with over 20 organizations.
Her main contribution was to move a very new network from its
inception to a point where it became a strong nationally recognized
advocacy group. Through Everjoice's leadership the network successfully
organized and mobilized women across the spectrum to participate
in legislative and policy reform on issues such as: land, HIV/AIDS,
violence against women, inheritance rights and constitutional
change. Everjoice was one of the young African women who played
a leadership role during around significant international processes
such as: The World Conference on Human Rights of 1993, the African
Regional Conference held in Dakar in 1994 and the Fourth World
Conference on Women, Beijing 1995. After leaving WiLDAF, Everjoice
started her own consulting firm, Process Consultants, specializing
in advocacy capacity building and campaign design, program
planning, monitoring and evaluation.
Between 1999 and 2001, Everjoice was a Commonwealth
Adviser to the Commission on Gender Equality in South Africa.
Her work involved training and advizing the Commission staff
and Commissioners on programs as well as gender policy analysis
and monitoring. Currently she is the International Head of Women's
Rights for ActionAid International.
Everjoice is involved with a number of Zimbabwean and international
oganizations working around women's rights, leadership and political
change. Notable among them is the African Women's Leadership
Institute - a program of Akina mama wa Africa, the Women in
Politics Support Unit, and the Women and AIDS Support Network.
She was one of the founders of the National Constitutional Assembly
of Zimbabwe (NCA)- an advocacy coalition on governance in Zimbabwe.
Read Everjoice's essay commemorating the 16th year of the 16 Days of Activism Campaign.
Read Everjoice's essay about Living on the Frontline.
Emira Woods*, US/Liberia, is the Co-Director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. Emira holds a BA in International Relations from Columbia, a certificate in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, a Master's in Government from Harvard, and is ABD in Political Economy and Government at Harvard. She recently was Program Manager for the Committee on Development Policy and Practice at InterAction, serving as a principal staff contact for advocacy at the UN, the international financial institutions, USAID and Treasury. She designed and implemented a strategic campaign around the Monterrey Financing for Development conference, working with both InterAction members and a broader coalition of Southern and Northern agencies. Prior to this position, she served as Program Officer of Oxfam America's Africa program, which involved outreach to the heads of major international institutions and grassroots groups in the most remote communities.
Ms. Woods has recently been interviewed on BBC, CNN, CBC, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the Diane Rehm Show, on Liberia and US-Africa Relations. She has hosted a WashingtonPost.com online chat and has published pieces in the Nation, the Baltimore Sun, and the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. She has been deeply involved with Foreign Policy in Focus and their Stop Firestone Campaign about human rights violations surrounding the rubber industry in Liberia.
Nani Zulminarni is
a gender and development specialist, facilitator and consultant
with an interest in community organizing and economic and political
empowerment of women. She is the coordinator of PEKKA, the "Women-Headed
Households Empowerment Program". PEKKA organizes women,
helping them build their vision for change, capacity, networking
and advocacy skills. PEKKA works in 8 provinces in Indonesia
-- Aceh, West Java, Central Java, West Kalimantan, NTB, NTT,
North Maluku and Southeast Sulawesi, reaching more than 300
poor villages and 10,000 families. Nani is also the chairperson
of The Center for Women's Resources Development (PPSW) and a
member of the executive committee of two regional networks -
the South East Asia for Popular Communication Program (SEAPCP)
and the Asia South Pacific Bureau for Adult Education (ASPBAE).
Her main responsibilities in the network are policy development,
program planning, monitoring and evaluation, and facilitating
workshops and training.
